


breeze driftin’ on by

by madeinessos



Category: Malcolm & Marie (2021)
Genre: Break Up, Gen, Post-Canon, Stream of Consciousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-08
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-14 07:41:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29292297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madeinessos/pseuds/madeinessos
Summary: Marie makes up her mind.
Kudos: 2





	breeze driftin’ on by

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Nina Simone’s “Feeling Good.”

Marie makes up her mind.

She’s got her own bank account and her own phone, and she knows where they both are, the account numbers the passwords the warranties the signatories the fine print the works because she’s an expert in filling out forms. Forms on forms on forms on fucking mundane thankless tasks, she’s got a Lifetime Achievement Award for it, an Honorary Doctorate for it, legibly _and correctly_ filling out paper forms on the tremor passing through her bony knee using a rattling pen squinting through tear-clogged eyes, so she changes her mind then makes up her mind, why not. Why the fuck not.

She takes a long drag of her cigarette. Cuban – citrus and coffee and dark chocolate. And smoke.

Crumbs of her croissant on her duffel bag. She unzips it, water-proof, bought with her own money months ago. Habit. Always on the move even before pampered asshole Malcolm, streets and scraps and scrapping. A coat and a skirt. Sweaters, jeans, shirts, blouses, underwear, pads. Her comb and toothbrush, her wallet and phone and tablet. Her cigarette packs and lighter wrapped up in a silk chemise. Another drag of her Cuban. She opens her second bag, this one tatty, and stuffs it with her most expensive dresses and jewellery and in the gaps her most expensive perfumes, she can sell them, who knows. She finishes packing even before she finishes a cigarette. Marie doesn’t know how long she’s had this list prepared.

It’s almost noon. Cloudy day. Last night’s fight lingers among the unwashed cups of coffee in the kitchen, the laundry scattered on the floors, Malcolm’s forgotten wallet, and Marie leaves it all there and flicks ash on a discarded tie on her way to the foyer. Malcolm’s at work with bags under his eyes.

Marie thinks of a movie joke as she hauls up her own bags and pulls up the hood of her jacket, but she’s made it a point to never—in the solitude of her skull—unironically think in terms of filmmaking and the only in fucking America film industry antics and all that film school bullshit, no, her mind is swimming on palm-green waters. Swimming on what she sees bumping into how she feels slipping under what she thinks about grinding against what she half-dreams about cashew nuts. Jesus, they have brought her back from the edge countless times, cashew nuts and Cuban cigarettes and counting back from ninety. Ninety’s a good number. Marie wants to get that old. She steps out of her glass house and shakes off the smoky grit of overboiled boxed mac and cheese and the fucking melodrama of it all.

She lights up another cigarette and doesn’t bother locking up the front door.

Where is she going? Malcolm’s sister in D.C.? Malcolm’s mom for a round of fucking therapy?

Ninety.

Nah. Nah, not them. She’s long past the point of thinking she _needs_ someone older, someone who knows better.

Older doesn’t always mean wiser, see, fuck no, they’re just free to take off the training wheels without someone else judgmentally wagging a finger or it just means they’ll get away with chopping off all that wagging. Fucking muse. Stupid shitty who the fuck signs up for that shitty gig? Muse, who needs that, who the fuck needs that, which unimaginative fuckwad needs that? Muse with a knife. With boiling water – on soggy pasta. With a lighter. With no neighbours for like a couple of miles. With an alibi, Christ she hates that she’s thinking of it as an alibi to maybe get away with –

Fuck, Marie wants her mom (postcards with palm trees).

Marie wants her eight-grade English teacher (packets of cashew nuts).

Marie wants that nice chainsmoking Mariah Carey stan librarian who works near the treatment centre she crashed into a couple of years before that market overdose.

Spacious glass house and spacious grounds and still claustrophobic and gagged. Is she really a masochist? A self-saboteur? Will she get calluses from all this walking? No, she wore socks. Sensible. She has gotten better.

Marie tosses the butt to the ground. Walks faster before she can second-guess herself, and tightens her grip on her bags. Eighty. This is her decision.

So what’s next for a wannabe actress slash recovered addict who wants to forget all that film bullshit? Marie needs to get the fuck out of here, out of this city, this state, hell this country, and she needs to be around people who know when to shut up and to stop wringing out her name and making it sound not like her own at all but a string of rebuking letters and and and

she needs to be away from thesis synopsis first act second act third act and what is this really about-isms and let’s unpack that-isms and kindly summarise your issue and all this pent up anger and frustration into a neat thesis statement to be critiqued, into a single neat little word made up of neat little twig letters that make sense, at least into proper sentences with clauses and commas and full stops, into something that’s not crazy. Seventy. Cycle, cycles, cyling,

see, the thing about circles is you break them like eggs. Get the fuck out. Smash yourself through. Because who the fuck decided what’s classic or canon or what makes a checklist of good qualities or what the path to fulfillment should look like, should, must, should, must, the fucking hegemony – wait, Jesus fuck –

Breathing. She doesn’t need a complete tit in her mind.

Well, she could, but the pleasant kind. Plump. Woman.

Deep breaths, Marie needs, and eighty counts.

Marie. Yeah that’s her name.

Ma, rie.

Mar, ie.

She says it like she’s dragging its panties off with her teeth. Like she has plucked its Cuban and stolen a flirty drag.

Like she has made morning coffee for it, neat in a mug because cups are useless, neat in a tray with freshly-hot croissants and fresh strawberries and a saucer of cashews lovingly neatened and thoughtfully arranged, thoughtfully, thoughtfully.

Like she has painted the town with her jewel-toned gratitude for it, vibrant, deep-seeping colours. Sixty.

She’ll make it palm-green again, Marie, and sun-burnished. It’s a name made for vibrant deep-seeping colours.

What bus has green on it, what state, what flag? Fifty.

She wants to hike to a bluff, an edge, a shore, a rooftop. And fucking scream. Scream to the wind. Graffiti artist.

Out of this fucking place.

And then Marie can figure out the rest...


End file.
